Firm May Not Offer New Westfarms Plan If Current One Fails

Westfarms Has Faith In Plan B

But Majority Owner May Not Offer Another If This One Fails

If a scaled-down, $85 million proposal to add more stores and parking to Westfarms mall is rejected, the mall's majority owner said it might not come back with a third proposal.

But the majority owner, The Taubman Co., was confident Tuesday that the towns of Farmington and West Hartford will approve the revised Westfarms expansion plan. The 17-year-old mall straddles the towns' boundary.

"This is our second time," Tony Ness, group senior vice president of development for The Taubman Co., said in an interview Tuesday. "If we get turned down, we would have to reassess if we wanted to come back for more."

The Taubman Co. was scheduled Tuesday night to share details about its revised plan with the Farmington town council.

"We have cut back the project not a little, but a lot," he said. "We think we have made a substantial effort here, and we expect the [Farmington] commissioners will recognize that effort and be supportive of it."

Taubman has met informally with Farmington officials and top planners in West Hartford to try to iron out problems that could derail the project when it is formally submitted to them for site approval in late summer or early fall, Ness said.

Doubters continue to question the viability of or need for an expansion that Taubman anticipates would take four years to complete, adding 382,000 square feet to the mall's 1 million square feet.

Tom O'Flaherty, spokesman for a Farmington neighborhood group opposed to the expansion, said his group would find out exactly what the proposed changes are at Tuesday's informal commissioners' meeting.

The Coalition Opposed to Westfarms Expansion -- made up of 4,100 residents of Farmington, West Hartford and New Britain who live close to the mall -- are also eager for its consultants and lawyers to review the new plan.

"Our opposition and the things we said the last go-round will still have to be addressed," said Bob Curran, a coalition spokesman.

In rejecting site approval last year for Westfarms' initial expansion plan, Farmington officials embraced much of the residents' criticism and concerns about the potential effect of the expansion on surrounding neighborhoods.

These include increased traffic congestion, and the noise and air pollution that would be generated by more automobiles at the mall.

Critics also worried about the strain on underground storm sewers, and the increased water runoff that paving for buildings and parking spaces would cause.

Ness said the changes address those concerns by reducing the size and scope of the proposed expansion by one-third. The price tag of the project also shrank with the size, to $85 million, from $125 million, he said.

As now contemplated, the mall would add space for one anchor store, instead of two. The number of proposed new shops has fallen to 50 from 90. Taubman also has trimmed 900 parking spaces from the 2,800 slots originally proposed in three new parking decks.

Nordstrom Inc., the Seattle-based specialty fashion chain, still plans to occupy the remaining anchor site, which would be its first store in New England. But the site would only have 177,000 square feet, 5,000 less than in the earlier expansion proposal.

Taubman and Nordstrom officials insist that Taubman is under no pressure to get site approval, but both say that Nordstrom needs to know as soon as possible whether to budget for a store in Westfarms.

A Nordstrom spokeswoman said Tuesday that the retailer has not chosen an alternative site should the expansion fall through.

Ness said the Stamford Town Center that The Taubman Co. developed and operates, and two other malls on the drawing board for Waterbury and downtown New Haven, would be large enough to accommodate a store the size that Nordstrom wants